Murder Is Scary But Band Members Are Scarier

Warped Tour Part 3

We made our journey to the stage where Motionless In White would be playing their set. My kids walked at what probably was a normal speed for them, but fuckin' faster than maximum speed for an old guy like me. I almost had to jog to keep up, but I still didn't want to die at Warped Tour, so I speed-walked and prayed they wouldn't get so far ahead of me that I wouldn't be able to find them.

They finally got to the crowd, and I joined them shortly thereafter. I honestly didn't think I was that far behind them but Hannah asked why I was so slow and I had to explain for the 94574049084349349874598'th time to her that I was old. She rolled her eyes and muttered something about me being too old to survive in this crowd. The rest of the kids laughed. I was very worried.

"Dad's gonna be so funny in this crowd," Oliver said to his siblings. They laughed.

"Well that's true," Hannah responded. "He's gonna get murdered."

I didn't understand what was so funny about that. Well, I did, but I just wondered why I was cursed with three children who hate me so much.

I noticed that the people for this crowd were especially scary-looking, more so than other people I've seen at this place. One guy who resembled some sort of goth clown caught me staring at him.

"Whatcha lookin' at old man? Do I scare you?"

"Oh, no. Not at all. I was just admiring your look."

"Yeah, right." He crossed his arms and turned away from me. My kids snickered.

Eventually, a woman who didn't look so scary announced that the band was about to play. The crowd screamed, yelled, and surged forward. I was pushed into a really tiny teenage girl who I swear wasn't there before. I nearly knocked her down and she turned around to glare at me. She was too fucking scary for someone who was so small.

The band, who looked rather like they had plans to murder everyone I loved, entered the stage and started playing some really heavy music that didn't actually sound like music. Hannah and Oliver went crazy thrashing their heads around, and Jake just stood there. He had that look on his face that he gets when he's thinking about burning someone. I was worried he was going to light the entire crowd on fire and thought that I would kill him if he did any such thing.

I made it through one whole song without anything bad happening to me. I couldn't let my guard down yet, though, because the lead singer shouted something about getting the fuck up and the entire crowd went crazy. I was able to stand my ground until the part of the song that the kids call "brutal breakdown." The lead singer said something that I later realized was "open the pit up." At one moment, I was surrounded by people going crazy. The next moment, there was no one next to me and a big-ass dude came out of nowhere and pushed me to the ground.

"Oh what the fuck," I may have said out loud or in my head. I couldn't really remember.

I tried to get up, but someone had stepped on me. I decided it was safer to just stay on the ground until this was over. I wasn't exactly sure if I was alive or not. Maybe I had died and gone to hell.